by Nick Louth
‘Only a bit on the visuals. But we’ve stripped off the Arabic translation overlay and boosted the sound which may help you more.’ Concannon flicked to a different screen. He hit play and the suicide video began running. Within two seconds of hearing the voice, Wyrecliffe was convinced. ‘That is definitely not Cantara. I wasn’t sure before. But now I’d stake my life on it.’
‘But would you agree that this woman on the video is the woman at Heathrow?’
‘I would say so.’ Wyrecliffe looked up at Concannon.
‘Okay. You do seem very sure. Now I want to challenge your faith in your own ability to recognise someone.’ He turned on a third screen, which displayed two facial images. One of a middle-aged blonde woman with a shiny forehead, and another of a slim dark-haired girl who may have been her daughter.
‘Do you recognise these women?’ Concannon asked.
‘No.’
‘Ever heard of Patty Hearst?’
‘Of course. An American newspaper heiress who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Organisation. Back in the seventies I think.’
‘It was 1974. Both these pictures are her.’
‘But decades apart, surely?’
‘Nope. Four years. The dark-haired image was 1974, when she helped her captors rob a bank. The other picture was 1978. Appearances really can change, especially with women.’ Concannon flicked to the next images. ‘Okay, who’s this?’
The two pictures were of Diana, the late Princess of Wales.
‘I suppose you are going to tell me that one of them isn’t her?’
‘But which one?’ Both pictures showed the statuesque princess in front of adoring crowds. Wyrecliffe looked from one to the other, and alighted on what he thought was a false shadow in the background of one.
‘The right-hand one is someone else.’
‘No. That’s the real Lady Di. The professional look-alike is on the left.’
‘Amazing.’
‘Last image. Who is this?’
The picture was of an intense, frowning, dark-haired woman. The perfect cupid lips, full, kissable even, were a enticing contrast to the rough almost masculine features and the forbidding dark eyes. Something nagged at Wyrecliffe’s memory. After a full minute looking he shook his head. ‘There’s something there. But I don’t know.’
‘This may jog your memory.’
When the next image flicked up, a cold shiver ran down Wyrecliffe’s spine. The bouffant silvery-blonde hair, sitting on top of a haggard face forever personifying evil. Every single sighted person in the UK over the age of thirty had this notorious image, this icon of warped motherhood, stored indelibly in their brain.
‘Myra Hindley,’ breathed Wyrecliffe.
‘Both photographs were taken the same year.’
‘I can’t believe I didn’t recognise her.’
‘That’s the problem. Humans are very good at recognising faces. We can each store images of thousands of faces in our heads. But we still aren’t anywhere near as good as we think we are. We do make mistakes. Those who want to look different really can, and they can fool us. And there is no more naturally mutable appearance than that of a young woman. I hardly recognise my own daughter when she is dressed to go night-clubbing. I’m sure you have seen that with Michaela.’
‘What do you know about my daughter?’ he said sharply.
Sergeant Cave broke in. ‘Calm down. We’ve got a file on you as thick as a brick. We’d be stupid not to. We’ve not been able to rely on you telling us everything, have we?’
‘For God’s sake,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Mr Wyrecliffe,’ Concannon said, ‘here’s the point I’m trying to make. If it was a year since you last saw Cantara al-Mansoor, there are all sorts of ways in which she could look different.’
‘But if that was Cantara,’ he said, pointing at the frozen-frame, ‘She wouldn’t be trying to look different. There would be no reason to. Yet she does. And on that video she even sounds a bit of a Yorkshire lass. I’m a Yorkshireman myself. I know what I’m talking about. Have you had the tape voice analysed?’
‘You’d have to speak to the Chief Superintendent,’ he turned to Sergeant Cave. ‘We can authorise that, can we?’
Cave shook his head. ‘Mr Wyrecliffe, we don’t have a problem with the bomber’s identity. The Egyptians don’t either. Only you do. In my view we shouldn’t even have indulged you with this. Only the boss can authorise this…’
‘Okay,’ said Wyrecliffe. ‘If it’s down to money, let me pay for it.’
Cave blew a sigh and looked at Concannon.
‘Let me have a copy of the tape, and I’ll get an independent report. It can’t do any harm, can it?’ Wyrecliffe said.
When Cave got off the phone to Shah she had a look of triumph on her face. ‘Sorry. Can’t be done. We keep the evidence. We don’t hand it out to witnesses, especially those with a vested interest in the outcome.’
Chapter Thirty
Being reminded of Michaela persuaded Wyrecliffe to try to fit in a quick trip to York. Seeing his daughter would be an escape from the last three stressful days. He’d had two police interviews, and three nights back in Dulwich with Imogen. It was the first time he’d been home for months.
While Wyrecliffe had been trying to dodge the press, running from the BBC to Paddington Green and the flat at Baron’s Court, Imogen had been finalising their divorce. Oddly enough, those evenings with her had gone better than he dared hope. He had basically let her have everything she wanted: the house, a share in his pension, a half-share in the rarely-used holiday home in Tuscany, and any of the furniture. As he’d told her, he now had bigger worries. Apart from one jibe from her, that it was typical of him to try to upstage his own divorce, she had been quite pleasant to him. They had shared her home-made shepherd’s pie, and he had prepared a dessert, his famous Kenwood Catastrophe of blitzed chocolate, cream and egg whites which by family reputation mostly ended up splattered over the walls and work surfaces. They drained the second bottle of Sauvignon blanc sitting in front of the fire, amid piles of legal documents. Then, amongst all the scattered but irrefutable evidence of their failed marriage, Imogen had started to cry. Holding her soundless shuddering form tenderly in his arms, they had ended up making love on the sofa, and embraced lingeringly for an hour afterwards. They shared a bed for the first time in some years. The fighting was over. And there was acceptance of reality. At least on that front.
* * *
The train journey to York gave Wyrecliffe some blessed peace. Sitting in the designated quiet carriage, his own mobile turned off, he looked out of the window and soaked up the snow-dusted rawness of the landscape as the train swished through the county of his birth. On the backburner at Today pending clarity over the BBC bomber affair, and with just odd pieces of radio and documentary work there was really nothing now to keep him at the BBC, and ever more reason to hurl himself into the abyss of Middle East reporting. The conviction that Cantara was innocent had overshadowed everything else in his life. He daren’t share it with his colleagues, whom he had told that Cantara was a friend and nothing more. With friends, too, he had been guarded. The line between persistence and obsession is a fine one. Imogen had, unsurprisingly, given it short shrift. Those few whom he had confided in had agreed with the police: Wyrecliffe’s problem was in accepting the truth, and shouldering the responsibility.
If that was so, then telling his daughter what really happened was important. He had already given her the gist of the story weeks ago. Now, over a meal at the Royal York Hotel, a grander than usual venue suggested by Michaela, he relayed the tale of Cantara’s attempted suicide. She listened open-mouthed.
‘But this Cantara is my age, Dad? And now you admit that you slept with her.’ She made a yuck sound. ‘Does Mum know?’
‘I’m sure she saw the documentary, just as you did. She pointedly hasn’t asked me.’
‘She complained furiously to me about the press calls,’ Michaela said. ‘But nothing el
se.’ She leaned forward and crinkled her face in puzzlement. ‘So let me get this right. You slept with this girl just because she wanted you to? And then she became a terrorist? But now you don’t think so.’
He shrugged. ‘I know it seems baffling.’
‘Dad, I really don’t understand this at all.’
‘Neither do I, Michaela. Neither do I.’
Wyrecliffe couldn’t bear to reveal the shame of his hurting Cantara, the fact she was a virgin, nor his anger at Taseena the night before. But without the full sordid background, the tale just didn’t make sense. Michaela knew as much. ‘You’re clearly not telling me everything, but I’m not sure I want to know.’
‘Okay. Let’s move on,’ he said. ‘I can’t make any progress in this until I can prove that it wasn’t her on the plane.’ He described the DNA problem, and the charge of perverting the course of justice that was hanging over him.
‘Blimey, Dad. You don’t do anything by halves do you? Have you seen the body?’
He nodded. ‘Not recommended, believe me.’
‘So who do you actually think this person is?’
‘I’ve no idea. Another young jihadi. Maybe British even. She had a slight Yorkshire accent on the video.’
‘So you can use a DNA test,’ she said. ‘There’s a world of difference between someone of Lebanese or Palestinian background and, say, a British Pakistani brought up in Yorkshire.’
‘But we’ve only got one body to get DNA from,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Dad, don’t be dim. You can use a mitochondrial DNA test.’
‘Really?’
‘We use them in archaeology. It’s the female inheritance of the energy-producing portion of the cell, and it changes only very slightly, via mutation, from generation to generation. You can get an exact breakdown of the racial components of the sample in question. Get a sample from the corpse, send it off to any of the labs that do ancestral DNA checking and you’ll get an answer for a few hundred pounds. If it comes back as ninety-three per cent Palestinian Arab and the rest is, I don’t know, Syrian, then it will confirm you’re wrong and the bomber was Cantara. Or someone else of similar ethnic origin. But if she comes back as three-quarters white British with a splash of Pakistani or something, then you’ll have proved your case.’
‘Michaela, you’re a genius,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘Still, the hard part will be to persuade the Egyptian authorities to agree to take the swab and let me have it. They’re happy for her to be who they think she is, and that’s that. It’s deeply political.’
‘Even if it does come back as Arab, you can still get a mitochondrial check against a relative. Is her mother still alive?’
‘Yes. She’s in a mental institution in Lebanon. Tyre, I think. There is also an aunt. That sounds encouraging.’
Just then a waiter came over and greeted Michaela with a remark which Wyrecliffe didn’t hear, but from her blushing reaction was clearly a bit cheeky. ‘I thought you had never been here before,’ Wyrecliffe said.
‘Ah,’ Michaela giggled. ‘I have, back in October last year. I don’t really remember it, because I was so horribly drunk. Kat Quinlan and I managed to snare this rich Arab who bought us dinner here.’
‘Michaela! That’s appalling.’ Wyrecliffe said.
Michaela’s jaw dropped. ‘Says the man who slept with a girl my age and gave her a job at the Beeb.’
‘That’s not exactly what happened, and you know it.’
‘Well, anyway, we didn’t sleep with him. Well, Kat may have done. I know she fancied him. I thought he was a bit weird. But we were so off our faces we missed a whole day of fresher’s week.’
Wyrecliffe was going to ask more about this mysterious wealthy Arab, but he was distracted by the arrival of the dessert trolley. And the equally sweet prospect of managing to nail, once and for all, who the bomber of EgyptAir flight 960 really was.
* * *
As Wyrecliffe had feared, neither Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch nor the Egyptian authorities warmed to his suggestion of taking a mitochondrial DNA sample. He considered writing to Cantara’s aunt in Syria, hoping that if a request came from her as a family member the answer might at least be different. But then he realised that throwing a grieving relative off balance wasn’t kind, especially as he might yet turn out to be wrong. Holding out hope of Cantara’s survival only to dash it again would be cruel.
Even Geoff Perry, Wyrecliffe’s former Lebanon colleague turned MI6 agent, wasn’t offering any help. Two calls to Perry’s home number since the air crash had gone unreturned. It was only three days after that, when Wyrecliffe finished a rare stint on Today that he got a call from BBC reception. ‘Mr Perry is here to see you.’
When Wyrecliffe emerged, he spotted Perry immediately, aloof among the gaggle of schoolchildren who were waiting to go on an escorted tour of the BBC TV Centre. Leading him outside, into the chill morning of Wood Lane, Perry turned to Wyrecliffe and said: ‘For God’s sake don’t ever ring me at home again. Your phone is tapped…’
‘Tapped?’
‘Of course. What do you expect? You have a connection to a terrorist, of course they are going to monitor you. They see all your e-mails, have copies of all calls from your mobile, so on and so forth. I’m very surprised you didn’t guess.’
‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
‘That’s a matter of opinion. But in any case, ringing me was counter-productive. I’d already stood aside from the investigation having declared the fact I know you. But the fact that you rang me, knew my home phone, and the messages you left, shows my bosses that we are well-enough acquainted for you to expect to be fed classified information. They can see that. It compromises me. They wonder what I may have leaked to you in the past. They certainly judge a man by the company he keeps. As it is I’m really taking quite a risk coming to see you at all.’
Wyrecliffe explained his predicament about the mitochondrial DNA test. Perry listened with interest, but seemed to have something bigger to say.
‘Let us suppose you are right. That somebody else was the suicide bomber. Where do you think Cantara is now?’
‘I’ve been wracking my brains over that,’ Wyrecliffe said. ‘All I can hope is that she is alive.’
‘Okay. Assume she’s alive, in Britain, aware of the news of course that someone’s using her identity. Wouldn’t she want to clear her name?’
‘Of course. If she was able to.’
‘Some things we can rule out as unlikely. Seeing as someone else used her passport, she can’t be abroad. Unless of course you assume she had a false passport. In which case she is trying to vanish in the most convincing way. Bang! Bombing an aircraft and killing hundreds. There’s no more powerful way to convince the world that you’re dead, when you are still alive.’
‘But you seem to be assuming she’s complicit, Geoff.’
‘Well, most of the scenarios in which she is still alive must include complicity. Assume she is not only complicit, but the leader of a terror cell. Just think of the freedom that being dead, an un-person, gives you. If she swapped identity, for example, with a completely innocent passenger who was persuaded or hoodwinked into taking the bomb on board a plane, she could then assume the dead person’s identity. ’
‘If they looked alike, which they don’t, quite.’
‘Perhaps. But if Cantara al Mansoor is the leader of a terror group, I suspect you won’t get many opportunities to compare her image with that of your recollection.’
‘Geoff, I find this line of inquiry very depressing.’
‘What would you prefer? The girl may be dead, murdered for a passport because she had a passing resemblance to the bomber. Or she is alive and she is an active terrorist or a supporter of terrorism. I don’t see much room for halfway houses.’
‘Well that’s the point. I don’t think it’s her. A good friend of mine at Al-Jazeera agreed to get me a copy of the original they had been sent. It’s clearer than the one from the jihadi website. I’m g
oing to track down an independent voice expert. Maybe then the police will finally listen.’
Book Six
Chapter Thirty-One
London
November 2010
Cantara was getting excited. Just a week until her flight to Egypt, where she would be attending the Islam and Justice Conference in Sharm el-Sheikh on behalf of the Islamic Light Group. She could hardly believe she was going to be at something so important, that the imam had chosen her. Even Zainab said she was envious of the opportunity. Cantara had spent all her precious Internet hours on the musallah’s computer reading up on the conference website and making notes. She was looking forward to meeting campaigners against colonialism and western interference in Muslim countries, though she still didn’t have a precise idea of what her job would be. Irfan Tiwana, who was to lead the delegation would meet her there later, Bram said. She looked again at the e-ticket printout for the flight that Bram had given her. The hotel details would be given to her on arrival, he had said.
Cantara decided that she would make one last trip in London before going. She had found a photo of herself with Tina, her downstairs neighbour at Mile End Road, taken at the same party Chris had come to. After some hesitation, she phoned Tina, using the ‘number withheld’ facility on her mobile. Tina was a little offhand, complaining about not being rung for almost a year. However, she had a great stack of post for Cantara. Did she want to come and collect it? Cantara knew that the trip would be frowned upon by Dr Khan, but she asked Zainab if she wanted to come too. With an illicit grin, she agreed. They slipped out of the musallah during a study session set aside for private reflection, and caught the tube, a straight journey on the Central Line from West Acton right through to Mile End Road. Cantara was surprised to find that Tina wasn’t at home. But there was a large carrier bag stuffed full of Cantara’s post hanging on the flat’s door handle.
As the underground train rattled back through central London, Cantara flicked through the pile of official and intimidating letters from the UK Border Agency, the Fouad Adwan Foundation, and Imperial College. There was a letter from her aunt in Syria, and then one other. From Chris Wyrecliffe, dated six months ago. She tore it open.
